Legal Weed Funds Put to Good Use in Colorado

With all of the false anti-pot rhetoric that floods our news feeds it is sometimes surprising that any positivity slips through the proverbial media cracks. In addition to funding for schools, raises for municipal employees, and money to help the homeless, Colorado is set to become the first state in the U.S. to fund scholarships with legal pot sales in the United States.

Colorado has been in the forefront of legalization and proclaims one of the most robust industries in the country compared to Washington State, Oregon, Alaska, Washington, D.C., who have all legalized the plant for recreational use.

“It’s incredible,” proclaims Beverly Duran, the executive director of the Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation, which will be awarding 25 students $1,000 each. Every year we get a nice pool of students … but we can always only award to a small percentage. This, for us, expands that to extraordinary lengths.” The number of students enrolled in a college or university has increased by nearly 5 million students since 2000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

With over 40 million Americans in student loan debt, the need for college funding is using taxes from marijuana to support education is a profound step towards ending prohibition. Many lawmakers call the rise in revenue “new money” because taxes were not being collected on black market weed sales.

Residents of the Centennial State are somewhat leery about the new funding and know the federal government could shut the industry down at any time. Until marijuana is completely removed from the list of Schedule I narcotics, we cannot be completely sure this is a permanent solution to our higher education woes.